A bus tour of PC failures and community-led renewable energy marvels

What happens when a busload of GTA residents set out to explore some of Ontario’s most impactful renewable energy projects, on one of the hottest days on record?

You get a moving classroom. A mobile protest. A tour of what’s possible, even when governments turn their backs.

On June 22, as wildfires raged across Canada and a blistering heatwave forced the province into air conditioned submission, more than 60 residents boarded a TTC electric bus for the ‘Road to Renewables’ tour. Organized by Environmental Defence, the initiative highlighted how community-led renewable energy projects continue to succeed despite sustained opposition and neglect from Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government.

On June 22, GTA residents attending the renewables tour faced dangerously hot and humid conditions, as Environment Canada issued a heat warning with temperatures soaring between 30 and 36 degrees and humidex values ranging from 40 to 45.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

Curious participants braved the sweltering heat. 

Three stops, one city, and a whole lot of hope. 

Stop 1: Canada’s first wind turbine

Toronto’s landmark wind turbine at Exhibition Place, known as the WindShare Turbine, the first urban wind turbine in North America and the first community-owned wind project in Ontario, marked the start of the one-day educational journey.

Windshare president Hassan Shahriar (left) shared that a 1987 seminar and engineer Greg Allen’s bold call to action, WindShare was founded over a decade later with the help of Toronto city Councillor Jack Layton, growing into a thriving cooperative of nearly 600 members dedicated to community-driven clean energy in Canada.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

Standing 94 metres tall, the 750-kilowatt turbine has been spinning since January 2003, producing enough electricity annually to power over 200 homes. It was a joint initiative between Toronto Hydro Energy Services and WindShare, a co-operative founded by the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op (TREC).

“It has been turned on for 22 years, one of the oldest turbines in the country and during this time, it was absolutely instrumental in motivating some of the key policy changes that resulted in the shutdown of coal facilities,” Windshare president Hassan Shahriar said, noting that wind has since played a major role in a reliable supply of Ontario’s energy needs.

The project was community-financed, with WindShare raising $800,000 through the sale of 8,000 shares at $100 each to Toronto residents. Most of the turbine’s parts, including its tower and blades, were manufactured in Ontario, and the project was assembled under the supervision of Toronto-based RJS Mechanical.

“It took the entire 1990s to figure out the mechanics: where, how, and how much it would take to build a wind energy project. But it all boiled down to people power,” Shahriar said.

In its first year, the turbine generated closer to 1,100 megawatt-hours of electricity. Shahriar noted that the project stands as a testament to both the “viability and longevity” of wind technology, as all of the energy it produces is fed directly into the grid.

The turbine’s success could have been just the beginning. In 2008, there was strong momentum toward renewable energy, Ontario Clean Air Alliance director Angela Bischoff explained, thanks to the leadership of then-premier Dalton McGuinty, whose government introduced the Green Energy Act, expanded wind and solar development, and offered incentives that attracted clean energy companies to the province.

That same year, a study commissioned by the Ontario Power Authority identified 64 viable offshore wind sites in the Great Lakes, which were estimated to produce 111.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, roughly 80 percent of Ontario’s total electricity consumption in 2022.

Toronto Hydro was ready to lead the charge with plans for an offshore wind farm near the Scarborough Bluffs. Those plans were shut down following organized opposition led by a group called Wind Concerns Ontario, which lobbied municipal governments to resist wind development, a movement that still exists today.

“Had it been built, we could have already shut down the Portlands Gas Plant,” Bischoff said.

Toronto City Council has urged the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to phase out the Portlands Gas Plant by 2035 and prioritize local renewables to support the city’s net-zero 2040 climate target, emphasizing the urgent need for clean power in a densely populated area to avoid merely shifting emissions through electrification.

(Environmental Defence) 

And then came Doug Ford. In 2018, immediately after first taking office, his government abruptly cancelled 758 renewable energy projects, costing taxpayers over $230 million, and began shifting the province’s focus back toward gas and nuclear power.

"If we had the chance to get rid of all the windmills, we would," Ford said in 2019.

In its 2018 campaign ‘Plan For The People’ the Ontario PC Party promised to “clean up the hydro mess” with “no carbon tax or cap-and-trade schemes.”

(Ontario PC Party)

The PCs also scrapped the $3-billion cap-and-trade program with Quebec and California, which was designed to cut emissions, and ripped apart plans for electric vehicle charging stations across the province.

But the potential has only increased with every year, with more sites identified in the Great Lakes that could still be developed, and advances in wind turbine technology have significantly increased output.

“If Ontario were to obtain 17,000 MW of Great Lakes wind power, we could eliminate the need for new nuclear and obtain 100 percent of our incremental electricity needs from renewables,” a 2023 report by Ontario Clean Air Alliance noted.

Instead, in 2023, the Ford government announced it would expand natural gas power by an additional 1,500 megawatts, sending Ontario in the opposite direction from the reductions targets both the provincial and federal governments have committed to.

Ontario once had one of the cleanest energy grids in Canada. At its peak in 2021, 94 percent of electricity came from non-emitting sources like wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear. By 2023, that number had dropped to 89 percent, and 84 percent in 2024.

In 2024, the PC government finally reopened the door to renewable energy, announcing plans to procure 5,000 megawatts of new capacity by 2034. But critics warned the move is too little, too late, with the procurement being far from what is needed to get Ontario on par with national and international commitments.

Ontario Clean Air Alliance chair Jack Gibbons had told The Pointer that most of those 5,000 megawatts won’t come from new projects. Many existing renewable contracts are nearing the end of their 20-year terms, and simply renewing them would account for most of the new target. If all contracts are renewed, the Clean Air Alliance predicts that only 850 megawatts of new renewable energy will be contracted.

“Since Doug Ford was elected, gas plant output has quadrupled. In the middle of a climate emergency, we’re ramping up gas and doing it to make room for what could become the largest nuclear build in the world, costing up to $400 billion,” Bischoff added before the tour group hopped on the bus to drive to its second stop.

June 21 is #ShowYourStripes Day, a time to raise awareness about climate change using climate stripes that illustrate the significant warming since pre-industrial times. Canada, for example, has warmed by an average of 1.7 degrees Celsius since 1948, nearly double the global average.

(ShowYourStripes)

The ride didn’t last long. As temperatures climbed, the bus gave out: forced to pull over and cool down before resuming the journey, a quiet reminder of the climate pressures the tour was meant to highlight.

While waiting for the bus to restart, the City of Toronto’s environment & climate and forestry program manager Nageen Rehman shared that Toronto Western Hospital is launching the world’s largest sewer heating system, harnessing heat pumps to draw 90 percent of its heat from the sewer system beneath the city streets, an innovation expected to save $700,000 annually in operating costs and reduce the hospital’s carbon emissions by 250,000 tonnes over the next 30 years. The project is being undertaken with federal and private funding.

(Noventa Energy)

Stop 2: TDSB Central Technical School

Toronto District School Board currently ranks 60th out of 72 Ontario school boards for energy intensity per square foot, 20 percent higher than the provincial average, with its greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent above the Ontario average.

Buildings are the largest emissions contributors, making up 45 percent of all GTHA emissions.

(The Atmospheric Fund)

But the school board is trying to change that one school at a time.

In 2024, the TDSB launched an energy pilot in 25 percent of its schools and, by optimizing Building Automation Systems (BAS) to operate mechanical equipment and control indoor air temperatures only during occupancy, saved $1.35 million in utility costs and reduced approximately 2,351 tonnes of GHG emissions across 139 schools within a year, according to the board’s 2024-25 Climate Action report.

Similar efforts are being undertaken by the Peel District School Board (PDSB), which saw a modest 5.5 percent reduction in energy consumption between 2019 and 2023, despite electricity emissions in the GTHA spiking by 28 percent in 2022 and 26 percent in 2023 due to increased reliance on natural gas for baseload power.

PDSB schools reduced carbon emissions by 4,165,263 kg CO2e over the past five years.

(PDSB/Multi-Year Strategic Plan Progress Report)

Between 2019 and 2023, the PDSB achieved significant sustainability milestones with 143.7 million ekWh in energy savings and $1.3 million in energy cost containment.

(PDSB/Multi-Year Strategic Plan Progress Report)

Funding remains a significant barrier to keeping the momentum going.

The 2025 Ontario budget includes major allocations for early learning and child care, but continues to shortchange public schools. After adjusting for inflation and enrolment, the TDSB is receiving $400 less per student than it did in 2018–19. For the 2025–26 school year alone, that gap amounts to $106.7 million. The seven-year cumulative shortfall now stands at $898.2 million, despite rising expectations for infrastructure modernization and climate action.

In the absence of adequate provincial support, the TDSB has pursued creative funding solutions. Ten of its schools are contracted electricity consumers with the Independent Electricity System Operator, a move that has generated a $3.4 million environmental legacy fund, which supports high-impact projects in areas like active transportation, urban forest management, energy retrofits, IT, and teacher training.

One of the board’s most visible achievements is its solar program, even when the board has “a backlog of maintenance,” TDSB EcoSchools specialist Jenn Vetter said.
 

TDSB EcoSchools specialist Jenn Vetter addressing the group in a dimly lit corridor overlooking the solar panels on the rooftop of Central Technical School.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

In partnership with Potentia Renewables, solar PV systems have been installed on 347 school rooftops, many of which received critical roof repairs in the process. 

Altogether, the systems include roughly 148,000 panels, generating 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, enough to power 6,300 homes and offset 8,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of removing 1,800 cars from the road each year. The solar panels at Central Tech alone offset the emissions of seven cars annually.

“So definitely, on the scale we’ve done with the panels, we’re seeing a bigger bang for our buck,” she said, noting the contract with Potentia runs for another decade, after which TDSB will assume full ownership and maintenance responsibilities for the panels.

“We know it’ll be a big job, and we’re already starting to think about how we’re going to maintain them and what we need to do to maintain them. We’ll probably need specialized staff for that. So, it’s something for us to be thinking about in the future.”

Sharing the success said the board is now “actively exploring ways to install heat pumps.”

“Our technical team identified 35 schools as good candidates for heat pump installations. So that is on our radar, and all new school builds will now have them,” Vetter explained, noting that geothermal systems were considered but ruled out for cost reasons under current provincial funding formulas.

She says the board is trying to show the province the “long-term cost recovery and environmental benefits, not just short-term costs.”

Stop 3: U of T’s GeoExchange System

The final stop offered literal relief from the heat, underground, beneath UofT’s downtown campus, where the “Landmark Project” is transforming how 30 campus buildings are heated and cooled. At its core is a GeoExchange system, a renewable energy technology that uses electrically powered heat pumps to move heat between buildings and the earth.

University of Toronto’s environment, climate change and sustainability presidential advisor and professor, John Robinson, says the project is expected to store about 15 gigawatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to about 250,000 EV batteries.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

“The Landmark building absorbs heat from about 30 buildings on the surface during summer. It cools those buildings and pumps that heat underground, releasing it there. The heat is stored underground in summer, then in winter the system pulls heat back out from the ground and uses it to warm the buildings. So you’re getting both heating and cooling from this system,” University of Toronto’s environment, climate change and sustainability presidential advisor and professor, John Robinson, explained.

“If you’re thinking of upgrading your home heating and cooling system, like switching from a natural gas furnace to this kind of system, you’d actually get air conditioning too, because GeoExchange systems do both. The ground acts as a heat battery; it stores heat in the summer and releases it in the winter.”

Participants of all ages enjoyed the ‘Road to Renewables’ tour.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

The system circulates water glycol through 372 boreholes, each 250 meters deep, about half the height of the CN Tower, where underground temperatures stay stable at around 10 degrees Celsius. The thermal storage powers heating and cooling year-round, reducing campus GHG emissions by 27 percent and replacing a gas-fired steam plant with mostly clean electricity.

The network spans 190 km of piping and includes 48 Electronic Vehicle chargers at the campus, two of which are fast chargers designed at the university to avoid peak-time electricity use, reducing grid strain and enabling real-world research.

The Landmark Project is part of UofT’s broader $38 million LEED initiative, which aims to cut emissions by over 50 percent by 2027 through deep retrofits, electric boilers, LED upgrades, and energy recovery in lab buildings. 

Robinson says the entire campus is being reimagined as a “living lab,” integrating sustainability into operations, teaching, and research across disciplines, from engineering and economics to policy and behavioural science.

“Sustainability isn’t just environmental—it includes social and human dimensions, getting beyond the narrow ‘environmental box’,” he said.

To digest the day’s learnings, participants sat down over a meal to share ideas about the future of renewable energy in Toronto, and to hear Environmental Defence climate and energy senior program manager Aliénor Rougeot remind them that they have a say in how the city’s rising electricity needs are met, which is projected to increase by 10 to 13 terawatt-hours by 2050.

Participants expressed why they want the government to make environmentally conscious decisions and transition to renewable energy sources.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

Historically, the city’s electricity planning—led by IESO’s Integrated Regional Resource Plan (IRRP)—has been opaque and fossil-fuel focused. That’s beginning to change, with IESO set to release a draft plan this summer for public consultation.

Rougeot highlighted that about half of Toronto’s future electricity needs could be met locally through solutions like district energy, rooftop solar, and potentially offshore wind. 

“And the good news is that renewables are now the cheapest source of new power globally. Also, local renewables save on transmission costs, we don’t need to build expensive new power lines,” she said. 

With Ontario importing 70 percent of its natural gas from the U.S., renewables offer a more stable, locally produced energy source. She admitted that there are concerns about reliance on imported solar panels and batteries, but growing investment, including “targetted government support” in Canadian clean tech, could boost self-sufficiency.

“If you care about clean air, climate stability, energy independence, and a healthier future, now is the time to speak up. Let IESO know what you want this electricity future to look like,” she concluded.

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